Researchers at the University of Tokyo have figured out to make holograms touchable. Not only can you “move” the holographic images on-screen by moving your hands, but you can also feel pressure sensations on the skin when you push or squeeze it. The project is on display at Siggraph 2009. [ Touchable Holography via Pink Tentacle ]

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Holograms that you can touch and feel

Pluggage is a prototype for a carry-on suitcase featuring a built-in battery/inverter and solar panel. Thus, it charges both as it rolls and picks up direct sunlight. The bag was created by ITP student Ohad Folman, who spent 3 months tricking out a Burton Wheelie Flight Deck rolling suitcase with a Duracell PowerSource Mobile 100 external battery pack, a stepper motor , multimeter to display battery life, and a Burton SolarRolls panel capable of generating 4.5 watts. The battery, says, Ohad, will charge within ~2 hours of walk time assuming an average walking speed between 2-5 kilometers/hour. A full charge should power a laptop for about 1.5 hours, depending on the make/model. Unfortunately, Ohad has had a heck of a time getting manufacturers like Samsonite to even check out his invention. Hence, he’s hoping to license the tech to a smaller luggage/travel company: I would envision this piece to retail for $400 to $550 depending on the model (with flexible solar capability or without). The kids model would probably be cheaper (around $250) and the bare-bones (for those who already have a carry-on case) and are interested in the kinetic capabilities would be around $300. I’m working on making the kinetic mechanism removable (like a tape cassette) so it can go through air port security easily (the kinetic mechanism can be scanned separately). I’m also working on hand release switch that will enable the user to remove the friction between the motor and the wheels in situations where the user needs to rush somewhere and does not want to have to deal with any level of friction. I’d buy one. Previously: Review: GoBe Solar Briefcase & Power-Hub The Chairman: a cellphone - Boing Boing Gadgets Rocking Horse cellphone charger Power Pump cellphone charger ready for glastonbury Brando Multi Solar Charger review (Verdict: Avoid) - Boing Boing … Suitcase full of bacon triggers airport bomb detectors Continental Baggage Handlers Stealing Gadgets from Luggage - Boing …

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Kinetic, Solar-Charing Suitcase

In 1983, my former professor and friend Howard Rheingold read an article by Alan Kay. Immediately, he wanted to experience the Alto and the future of networked minds. He started calling PARC on a weekly basis. Nothing. Then when he called back to remind HR of his existence, he was given an immediate assignment: write a last-minute speech for a Xerox executive. With that, Howard had landed himself his “dream job” at PARC as an in-house writer. Howard’s gig involved interviewing researchers and scientists about their work with interfaces, LAN, etc. Super cool in retrospect and at the time, I’m sure. He goes into great detail in his book Tools for Thought (pictured), which explores batch processing, the 1960s, time sharing, and more at Xerox PARC. Howard’s insights into the successes and failures of Xerox PARC are well worth a read. Here’s how he framed PARC’s trajectory and missed opportunity in his Wired article from 1994: Personal computers did not spring naturally from the computer industry. They were deliberately realized by a radical fringe, against all the force of the day’s accepted wisdom… These zealous wizards handed Xerox an astounding lead in information technology in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade, Xerox watched as upstarts like Apple and Microsoft grew wealthy off Xerox’s discoveries. Neither Apple nor Microsoft even existed when the first Altos were designed in the early 1970s; by 1990 either company could have bought Xerox. The tragicomic Xerox saga is recorded in Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander’s Fumbling the Future . Here’s the question he ended his 1994 article with: So how will PARC guarantee that this time they won’t fumble their new future? Three ways, says JSB [ John Seely Brown ]. “One, we are more careful about intellectual property. Two, we are working smart - looking for entrepreneurial partnerships to develop ideas quickly. And three, Xerox has radically repositioned its organization so that its corporate strategy is shaped and informed by PARC and PARC is being shaped and informed by corporate strategy.” And, of course, here’s what eventually happened: By 2002, PARC became in independent research business with the ability to license its own patented tech and discoveries to other companies, institutions, and start-ups, especially the recent wave of alternative energy upstarts. While there are still ties to Xerox, PARC’s profits are entirely its own. What’s more, I’m told revenue is even split up among PARC employees. Lessons learned.

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PARC: Un-fumbling the Future

There are plenty of nifty search engines that don’t begin with “Goo” and end with “gle,” as Wired points out . But one site they forgot to include is MrTaggy , which was created by PARC’s Augmented Social Cognition Area. Unlike other engines, this one doesn’t index the content of web pages. Instead, it uses PARC’s TagSearch algorithm, which aggregates and sorts the user-generated tags added to social bookmarking sites like Delicious . From there, users can give thumbs up or down for each and every result. The goal: be part-search, part-recommendation engine by tapping the wisdom of the crowd. BBG asked the ASCA researchers to connect the dots between PARC’s earlier forays into search and MrTaggy. Here’s what Ed Chi, Manager of ASCA , shared with us: First, one of the most efficient ways of browsing and navigating toward a desired information space was illustrated by the pioneering research on Scatter/Gather , a collaborative project on large-scale document space navigation between amazing researchers such as Doug Cutting (of Lucene, Hadoop fame) and Jan Pedersen (chief scientist at AltaVista, Yahoo, Microsoft for search). The research done in early to mid 90s , showed how a textual clustering algorithm can be used to quickly divide up an information space (scatter step), ask the user to specify which subspaces they’re interested in (gather step). By iterating over this process, one can very quickly narrow down to just the subset of information items they’re interested in. Think of it as playing 20 questions with the computer. Second, also around the mid-90s , an important information access theory was being developed at PARC in our research group called Information Foraging , which showed that you can mathematically model the way people seek information using the same ecological equations used to model how animals forage for food. We noticed that we can use information foraging ideas to model how people used Scatter/Gather to browse for information. It turns out that it was possible to predict how people use the information cues (which we called ‘ information scent ‘) in each cluster to determine whether they were interested in the contents inside the cluster. It turns out that Scatter/Gather can be shown to be a very efficient way to communicate to the user the topic structure of a very large document collection. In other words, people learned the structure of the information space much more efficiently using Scatter/Gather interfaces. I hope it is quite clear that the relevance feedback mechanisms are very much inspired by Scatter/Gather. The related tags communicate the topic structure of what’s available in the collection. Through this process, we designed MrTaggy, hoping that it would be just as efficient as Scatter/Gather in communicating the topic structure of the space. Third, our group had developed Information Scent algorithms and concepts to build real search and recommendation systems. These algorithms build upon earlier work on a human memory model called Spreading Activation . TagSearch algorithm uses similar concepts here. It constructs a kind of Bayesian modeling of the topic space using the tag co-occurrence patterns. TagSearch’s algorithm owes its heart and soul in concepts in Spreading Activation, which helps us find documents that are related to certain tags, and vice versa. So what it’s like to actually use MrTaggy? I started a search with the suggested tags “funny” and “video.” Less than 30 seconds later, I discovered this Bruno-related gem from FunnyorDie that had, until now, somehow escaped my attention. Digg Dialogg with Bruno - watch more funny videos Good find, MrTaggy!

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Mr.Taggy & the History of Search at PARC

Well scientists have already created glowing dogs and cats , so it was only a matter of time before somebody did a monkey . Nice, guy, thanks for the AIDS. Though primates that make a glowing protein have been created before, these are the first to keep the change in their bloodlines. Although the work demonstrates the principle that a gene can be introduced into a primate bloodline, study co-author Hideyuki Okano of the Keio University School of Medicine said it may not be suitable for studying all diseases. That limitation is about 10,000 bases, or letters, of the genetic code. That upper bound will constrain the diseases that can be studied. Great, so we’ve got more glowing animals with the promise of help curing disease. Well hurry up and cure one already! I’m starting to think these “scientists” are just making glowing pets to bring home to their daughters. Which, I think we can all agree, is despicable (glowing dinosaur, pronto). You can’t hide from me, little Anchisaur! Glowing monkeys ‘to aid research’ [bbcnews] Thanks to Matt, who, LOOK BEHIND YOU - A THREE HEADED MONKEY! ( swish )

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Okay?: Another Day, Another Glowing Animal

Filed under: Gadgets , Etc. , Tech , Volkswagen Vehicle infotainment systems, those all-inclusive interfaces controlling the myriad electronics on today’s modern cars and trucks, can make or break the driving experience. CNET is offering us a sneak-peek at Volkswagen’s latest iteration from the company’s Electronic Research Laboratory (ERL). Developed with Intel, the new system uses Global Open Research Infotainment Architecture, or GLORIA. Most systems today us a joystick-like device, touch screen, or hard buttons on the edge of the display (or a combination of the three) to control the inputs. Volkswagen’s new GLORIA system takes it one step further by making Apple iPhone-like “gesture control” possible. This means that users are able to navigate quickly by simply tracing single letters across the pressure-sensitive display. Another unique feature may allow users to import third-party widgets for the system, much like consumers currently load apps from iTunes onto their iPhones. As cool as it sounds, GLORIA is still under development and she isn’t expected to see showrooms for a few more years. [Source: CNET , Photo by CNET] REPORT: Volkswagen’s next-gen nav system to get Apple iPhone-like gestures originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 21 May 2009 13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink ?|? Email this ?|? Comments

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REPORT: Volkswagen’s next-gen nav system to get Apple iPhone-like gestures

From the UW Madison press release: The interface consists, essentially, of a keyboard displayed on a computer screen. “The way this works is that all the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually,” says Williams. “And what your brain does is, if you’re looking at the ‘R’ on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the ‘R’ flashes, your brain says, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Something’s different about what I was just paying attention to.’ And you see a momentary change in brain activity.” Wilson, who used the interface to post the Twitter update, likens it to texting on a cell phone. “You have to press a button four times to get the character you want,” he says of texting. “So this is kind of a slow process at first.” However, as with texting, users improve as they practice using the interface. “I’ve seen people do up to eight characters per minute,” says Wilson. Whew. We’re safe for now. I believe this is the tweet in question .

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Video: Brain -> Twitter Interface

Boston Dynamics [ via ]: SquishBot is a program to develop a new class of soft, shape-changing robot. The goal is to design systems that can transform themselves from hard to soft and from soft to hard, upon command. Another goal is to create systems that change their critical dimensions by large amounts, as much as 10x. Such robots will be like soft animals that can squeeze themselves through small openings and into tight places. Every orifice on my body just went all Dizzy Gillespie. Previously: Video: Boston Dynamics' Latest Big Dog Pack Bot - Boing Boing Gadgets Video: Boston Dynamics LittleDog Robot - Boing Boing Gadgets

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Terrifying robot image of the day: Boston Dynamics’ SquishBot

Unlike other color e-paper examples , Bridgestone’s prototype color e-paper can refresh its screen in just 0.8 seconds , making it fast enough to use with touchpen input.

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Warmer, warmer: e-paper with sub-second refresh

Since the government has finally declassified the program, the people who worked at Area 51 can now talk about A-12 OXCART , a Wicked Secret program to build an test a Mach 3 spyplane at Nevada’s Groom Lake. (You may know it as the SR-71 Blackbird.) The L.A. Times talks to survivors of the program: So, what of those urban legends–the UFOs studied in secret, the underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they’d take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country’s most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes and Martin, it is clear that much of the folklore was spun from threads of fact. As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers some insight: “We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area”–even though the MiG wasn’t shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk, that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area 51’s backyard. “Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground,” he says. Previously: SR-71 Blackbird by Lego Monster - Boing Boing Gadgets Story: SR-71 Pilots Show Off - Boing Boing Gadgets Blackbird Rider Acoustic Carbon Fiber Guitar - Boing Boing Gadgets Photo: James Dale

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OXCART: The Real Secret of Area 51